Letters and short takes January 17 2023

In 1971 the original Australian progressive rock band Kahvas Jute split; myself, Maureen and guitarist Dennis Wilson carried on with Kahvas Jute and headed to England. We settled in London, picking up English bass player David O'List from the band The Nice, Jute doing gigs such as the Speakeasy and London universities.

The twist of this story is Dennis was asked to audition to play guitar in The Jeff Beck Band as Jeff had just left the group. Management and the band members wanted to continue on with a new name and a new guitarist, and it turned out they loved Dennis. Jeff heard about this and said "there is only one guitarist in this stable and that's me". Dennis passed the audition and lost the gig, all in one go.

In my opinion Dennis Wilson was by far the best rock guitarist in Australia at the time. It's unfortunate that Australia has a terrible history of not recognising the dedication and high level of musicianship from musicians and artists of the past.

Keep music live.

CONCERNING Cardinal George Pell, one cannot help wondering if the choirboy whose life was so tragically cut short by a drug overdose had been alive and personally able to testify regarding sex abuse in St Patrick's Cathedral whether history would have gone in a different direction.

There are those in Australia, many dedicated Catholics but some not, who will have no dirt attached to Pell despite the Royal Commission's findings. Some like Tony Abbott would even have him made a saint. Despite what his loyal followers might think, I doubt the victims of child sex abuse have ever been out to destroy George Pell. Those still living are concerned, I would think, with daily survival and wanting justice.

Pell's real enemies, I believe, were within the Catholic Church itself, those whose toes he had trod on regarding Church finances and his conservative opinions.

WHILE I do not know what safety standards were specifically in place before the helicopter accident at Sea World, in my opinion it seems they were either deficient or insufficient to prevent this tragedy.

Helicopters are most vulnerable during take-off and landing as with all aircraft; yet the greater vulnerability with a helicopter is that the take-off is predominantly in a vertical direction, and the pilot does not have clear vision due to significant blind spots while undertaking this movement. Once the helicopter is airborne, the pilot has good vision as to where the craft is going which is essential for safe flying; however, when manoeuvring to land, the pilot again has significant blind spots on the path the craft must travel.

We who travel from our airports expect a very high safety standard that is delivered to us all via air traffic controllers situated at the airports. The air traffic controllers have vision of the runways and while they have a lot of electronic tracking, the visual tracking is mostly very possible. Air traffic controllers keep all aircraft at a safe distance from other craft in the general vicinity.

There are many tourist joy flight locations in Australia. I believe we must lift the standards to ensure that at every location there is a fully qualified air traffic controller. We need to ensure both electronic and visual tracking of each aircraft are of the highest standard to enable constant contact with each aircraft, especially during landing and the take-off manoeuvres. If we currently do not meet this standard, then the authorities must urgently undertake to implement this standard at every place where a tourist joy flight takes-off and lands. What price people's lives?

FOR Geoff Black, ("Few left with easy answers after Pell passing", Letters, 13/1), belief is a human emotional response, as opposed to objective truth. Are his beliefs no more than emotional responses? On this basis, if no amount of evidence can persuade staunch believers in Cardinal Pell's innocence to believe otherwise, then no amount of evidence can persuade staunch believers in Cardinal Pell's guilt also to believe otherwise.

One example of objective truth, not in the world of metaphysics and superstition, is that a unanimous decision in April 2020 by the High Court quashed child sexual abuse convictions against Cardinal Pell, saying that there was "a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof". Mr Black says perhaps the best hope is that there is a God who judges people in the afterlife. Cardinal Pell has often said the same thing.

RECENTLY our previous multi-portfolio'd prime minister, Scott Morrison, arranged to cancel the order to build our replacement submarines with France and replace them with nuclear powered submarines to be built and supplied by the USA. This caused the French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron to accuse Mr Morrison of being a liar.

This caused me to wonder: what happened to the Australian policy to ban atomic powered foreign vessels from our ports? It also puzzled me that Australian policy had been not to use any form of atomic power in Australia. It seems to me that if we owned and operated an atomic powered ship that this would contravene that policy.

The practical authority of our parliament appears to be increasingly ignored and or bypassed these days. So is that the case now? Have the views of Australian citizens regarding nuclear energy been bypassed again by another back-door procedure?

THE Australian public is increasingly alert to the environmental threats that result from burning fossil fuels. Many people I know, however, are unaware of the negative health impacts. Burning coal releases toxic airborne pollutants including particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, lead and arsenic. In Australia, this air pollution is responsible for around 14,000 incidences of asthma attacks and 800 premature deaths per year. Six of the ten most polluted postcodes in Australia, including Muswellbrook, contain a coal-fired power station or a coal mine.

This is shocking for the health of these communities. Further, according to the National Asthma Council using gas, especially for cooking, is attributable to 12 percent of all childhood asthma cases. The resultant air pollutants are deemed equivalent to having a smoker in the home.

To protect the health and well-being of our children and wider population, we must cease burning fossil fuels and instead use clean, safe, renewable energy.

I AGREE with Ben Cornish, (Short Takes, 12/1), on the crosswords that have been in each day of the Herald. Love doing them and likewise would like to see them everyday.

WELL said Helen Douglas regarding the Premier, ("Sorry, Premier, but the apology doesn't cut it", Letters, 14/1). He is only sorry he got caught. I find his actions totally unacceptable. Anyone who wears any kind of Nazi clothing or symbols is the lowest of the low. Only worthy of contempt.

THE issue of the NSW Premier wearing a Nazi uniform to his 21st birthday party more than 20 years ago shouldn't have anything to do with his job as premier. Most people I know have made some silly decisions at that stage of their life, including me. I think the current premier has done worse things while in the position of treasurer: the workers' compensation fiasco he oversaw, short paying injured workers and using money out of the injured workers fund to pay for some of his office staff comes to mind. This and some of the other shortcomings he has had I think are far worse than wearing the Nazi uniform decades ago.

CRICKET Australia (CA) has decided the Australian cricket team will boycott a one-day series against Afghanistan as a show of condemnation of the treatment of women by the Taliban government. If CA think the Taliban are going to change their centuries-old religious ways, they are demonstrating appalling naivety. If CA wants to get into the way women are treated, why don't they raise the well-documented issue of abuse and domestic violence involving Australian women and children? CA should stick to trying to run cricket and leave the politics to the government.

THINKING back, I did some pretty dumb things when I was 21 and I will wager so did most others, particularly the males of the species. I can't remember that much about my 21st birthday party, and not because it was a long time ago.

DISINGENUOUS is the politest word I can think of to describe Bruce Brander's Short Take, (14/1). Linking the Indigenous Voice in parliament with the cooperative and productive Labour and Employment Summit. Then inaccurately stating it all went the unions' way, which anyone doing their own research will find false.

SHANE Warne may be gone, but we have a new spin-king in Peter Devey who, in total ignorance of the irony, judges the provision of equity for Indigenous Australians through a Voice to parliament as "racist", ("Why I'll vote no", Letters, 12/1). Now I've heard it all.